AI has been impacting the online experience since the advent of search way back in 1996 when Sergey Brin and Larry Page founded Google. Smart engines already supply customer recommendations in online shopping (Amazon) and viewing recommendations (YouTube, Netflix). As machine learning evolves, there are countless other ways that applications of artificial intelligence in e-commerce will improve more than just the online shopping experience.

See it, Search, Buy It

Imagine going to a wedding or a special event and falling in love with a friend’s pair of shoes. Visual search helps you find exactly what you want based on something you saw. Take a picture of those shoes, and an AI engine could find multiple samples of something similar. This saves time on the consumer side and increases discoverability for retailers.

Virtual Personal Shoppers

Not everyone loves to spend hours searching for a new jacket online. That’s why companies like, North Face, are introducing artificial intelligence applications that shop for you. Software is faster than humans and may be better at finding specific items based on simple logic rather than emotion. Think about how Waze helps you find the right route based on traffic patterns. It’s using real data to get you there faster, although that route may differ from your habits or assumptions. A virtual shopper could lead buyers to online e-tailers and products they may not have otherwise sought out.

Improved Personalization

There are many ways to gather information about both what you’re shopping for and how you shop. Currently, ad re-targeting reminds users about items that were abandoned in their carts. Eventually, AI could gather even more information about how specific, individual shoppers search for goods, research, and curate information before making a buy. This information, in turn, may lead to smarter and more customized ad platforms and recommendation engines that improve the personal shopping experience.

Integration of AI and CRM

Machines are better equipped to analyze large blocks of data more quickly than humans. All products and brands have to compete on customer service, and AI could help scale customer service more effectively. Imagine that an upset customer is more accurately routed to the right team based on more smarter voice-responsive software. Software could do a better job of helping customers find products and direct them to the right answer to their query or concern.

Using Natural Language Processing for Search

Sometimes, when putting search terms into an engine, it take a few tries before you get the results you want. NLP, or natural language processing, is one of the fastest-growing forms of artificial intelligence in e-commerce because it will help customers get from point A (searching) to point B (conversion) more quickly and with less frustration. NLP enables machines to learn how humans speak and can translate that speech into all types of behavior. Because this is such a wide-ranging field, the applications for this technology will impact everything from shopping to medicine.

CrewMachine is using AI to drive how e-commerce brands create and manage online content and fix problems too great for human teams to solve alone. We’d love to talk more about it, so contact us to set up a demo today.